The Civil War Letters of Wellesley College and Brandeis University project was funded by a Civil War Preservation Grant from the Massachusetts Sesquicentennial Commission of the American Civil War. The project idea was born as a collaboration between the two academic institutions, both members of the Boston Library Consortium, with the intention of creating an openly available online academic resource to reach students, scholars, and researchers interested in exploring the voices of those who were deeply involved in the Civil War. This website presents several paths to that exploration, from lesson plans and timelines to maps and voice recordings.

At the core of this website are the Wellesley and Brandeis holdings of correspondence between Civil War soldiers and their families. Each letter in Wellesley’s Catharine Mitchill ‘31 Collection of Family Letters and Brandeis’s Michael Lally Civil War letters has been digitized and almost all have been transcribed.

We welcome you to explore: